


the time is now

by sazzafraz



Series: Hollow Moon [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, outtakes from another fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 14:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8989921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: Outtakes and scenes from No Time for Survival.





	1. Fuyuki and Dosa talk about Sasuke

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the outtakes! 
> 
> First up: a discussion between two members of Giri about our dumpster truck child. Takes place near the beginning of chapter three. 
> 
> Next up: the companion to this little snippet. A peek into the mind of a character much talked about but whom, alas, perished before the main story took place.

“Psych wants me to report a problem with the Uchiha.”

“Woo hoo,” Fuyuki replies barely dragging her eyes from the latest intel on Kiri. They’re where she wants them to be; anxious about Uzushio’s resurgence and the cultural influence Akiyama Sato is exerting through Wave. It won’t be long until they notice she’s been picking off their non-vital messengers or her interference in their effort to reestablish an embassy in Fire. Terumii will recognise her hand, which is what she wants. It means she’ll be looking the wrong way when Frost undercuts them and closes off their trade routes to Earth and Wind. She likes Mei, considers her a worthy adversary, but she doesn’t take chances. Water could be a hell of an ally and the harder she presses now the easier it will be when she gets them to a table. 

With a flourish she authorises a scatter attack along Fire’s border. There’s a little no man’s land there she can push into a contested zone if she’s careful. If Shimura Danzo is the same man he was in the war he’ll seed it with distrust himself. “Alright. What did he do now?”

Dosa huffs, flopping into his seat. “I just don’t know what to do with him.”

“No one does.” She feels a distinct sympathy for Konoha. There is nothing you can  _ do  _ with an asset like Uchiha Sasuke. He’s every wrong kind of broken: his family is dead but he’s not really an orphan, his loyalty is wayward but it’s not for sale, he’s absurdly powerful for his age but he has no ambitions you can mold. You can predict him in broad strokes but no matter how many people she interrogates she can’t find the essential piece she needs to slot him in her plans. He’s not quite a variable. He’s not quite loyal. She has enough on him to hold him but not forever, not even for long. “That’s why we ended up with him.”

Dosa looks at her impassively. “Can I reiterate,” he repeats for the thousandth time, “what a bad deal that was.”

“It wasn’t.”  

He ignores her. “His psych profile shifted again.” He counts them off on his fingers. “Antisocial, depressed, a five on the scale for disassociation. He doesn’t have a problem following orders but he’s twitchy. I can’t trust he’ll follow an order if it presses too hard on his buttons. Three strikes is the limit, remember. I know you want to save every broken toy soldier but some are just too damaged.”

As much as she loves Dosa it’s times like these she’s painfully reminded that he comes from a different world. Those cracks are why she keeps him, accommodates him when any one else would break him until he complied. In this world that painful struggle of realisation and questioning is what keeps truly great shinobi unbroken. Hopefully it will be what allows them all to work towards peace. “Five out of ten isn’t bad.”

“It’s a scale of six.”

“Do we have sixes?” Dosa rolls his eyes, indicating that that isn’t the point. “Well.”

“Why are you so invested?” Dosa asks. It’s a question he’s been sitting on for awhile.

She considers that. What made her invest in Sasuke is at once as big as a kinship she feels for him, built through that one hellish mission she backed his brother on, and as small as the token of having  _ the  _ last sharingan. She doesn’t move for less than total surety or total surrender and Sasuke is not either. He won’t ever trust her, he won’t ever believe her. He can’t. 

Maybe it’s this: she can offer him a kindness she was never given.

Not that he knows that. Not that he ever will. There’s a potential greatness him. A compassion she gets glimpses of sometimes. If his family had lived he would’ve been a good man. If she can just get enough time, enough space in his head, maybe she can at least give him a path to being a peaceful one.  _ That _ urge is lead entirely by the part of her that suffocated in Kumogakure. The daughter of the mountains burying nearly all her siblings because the men in the valleys couldn’t help themselves; they had to reach for more power. 

All the old families share the same story. The endless pursuit of power chewed them all up and spat them all out. Senju, Hashira, Uzumaki, Oonoki, Hyuuga, Matsushita, Kaguya, Uchiha. A straight line back to the Ootsutsuki. Nearly all of those families are dead now, blown out like a candle in a storm. Other names, although no less bloody, have risen to fill their places. Power rooted in violence is a cycle.      

Come hell, come high water, she will break that. 

She pauses while writing a missive to Frost asking them to help destroy the rebel stronghold sitting on Kusagakure's grain supply. Maybe that's it. Sometimes the weapon that cuts that thread is kindness. Maybe that works better.

Dosa fidgets, she spares a thought for the scars on his fingers, some are new. She knows he just brought Sasuke and Haru back from a track-and-bag but the summary on the report didn’t indicate any serious action. “It’s just not what I’d expect from you.” He mutters.  

That she understands even if it annoys her. A reputation built on the back of what civilians cutely call ‘war crimes’ isn’t an easy thing to shake off. She doesn’t bother. A tool is a tool. But she thought he was smarter than that. “Maybe I’m a better actress than I thought if you believe a bingo book from nearly a decade ago over your eyes and ears.”  She forgives him, after all he can’t peer inside her mind. “It’s like this,” how does she explain this so someone who never grew up in this vicious cycle can understand? “If I can’t give Sasuke, who isn’t responsible for most of his circumstances, who hasn’t participated in the wider shinobi system in years, if ever, and who when given an opportunity has shown a remarkable penchant for humanity, the benefit of the doubt, I might as well walk over to the nearest shinobi centre and kill all of them. From the youngest babe to the oldest veteran.” Her voice is measured and calm. No more invested than a comment on the weather. Dosa blanches. Fuyuki nods to herself, she’s on the right track. “Then I might as well go to the next one and do the same. Then I might as well go grab the nine tails and set it loose to lay the world to waste. And then, finally, I might as well piss on the ashes of everything I’ve destroyed and lament how there’s nothing to build from.” She seals it with a phrase that knocks around her head sometimes. “We are not what was done to us.”

Dosa, to his credit, recovers remarkably. “And,” he grimaces shakily down at his hands, “Uchiha Itachi made a hell of a deal.”

Fuyuki smiles. “And that.”   


	2. Itachi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Itachi. The beginning of what was his work in this universe but fell by the wayside. It is a really, really rough draft, and it shows, but Merry Christmas anyway! Takes place before NTfS.
> 
> Next up: Our sunshine boy! A day in Konoha during which several characters get some news they never would have expected.

The circumstances that lead him to Hashira Fuyuki -or as he better remembers her from the ANBU files, Hashira Yuuna- are dictated by one simple fact: his window is closing far sooner than he thought it would.  

Many things are still in play. Akatsuki is on track with its pursual of the beasts, Sasuke is still growing stronger, Madara is still paranoid and untrusting. Most of what Itachi has laid out is working in his favor.

Most.

What’s failing him is ironically something his skill can’t get him around. The sharingan may bend time and space but it can’t reverse the kind of damage crawling over his lungs. Heedless, reckless and painful, Itachi finds it easy to believe that  _ this  _ is as much a genetic legacy as his eyes. 

The Hashira bloodline is one of the few on the continent to make a dojutsu user pause. It doesn’t occur often enough in a high enough ability to bother most who have adequate control of their gifts. Itachi has seen Hashira deployed; she’s off the charts. 

It was internal Kumo politics that kept Hashira away from Konoha during the war. The family itself descended from the same branch of the Ootsutsuki as the Uzumaki and like them retained strong chakra based abilities. Where the Uzumaki expanded they stayed traditional developing a social role as spiritual and political advisors. In a country that near exploded with social and technological progress they provided a ballast of traditionalism. Little whispers floated down that the Hashira family was unhappy with the way they were being cut out of Kumo’s hierarchy; once nation builders they found themselves being stripped of power following the third Raikage’s ascension and his faith in technological progress. They eventually found themselves cast out.  

Cute story. 

The point at which the Uchiha and Hashira rapidly diverge is how they solved the problem. The Uchiha thought to overthrow the system, the Hashira thought to strangle it. They ascended to military posts, diplomatic ones, married into prominent families. You couldn’t spit without hitting one. You take one head and suddenly six take its place. Round a corner and there are three more. A solid plan, a dependable one, that was resolved with the exact some bludgeon that all Hidden Villages use. 

They were wiped out. 

How, why and when are moot points. These things end the same. He has an idle curiosity, one he won’t follow, to find out if the method was the same. 

He doubts it somehow. The military might of that family rested entirely on Yuuna. Nor, frankly, does he see the corruption seeded in Konoha in Kumo. He might love Konohagakure, he might be willing to sacrifice everything in the name of the Will of Fire, but he is not entirely blind. He is well aware that the foundations hide rot and ruin. His mother would be proud of him for that. 

It would be nice, sometimes, to remember them without the dullness of a mission layered over the memories. It was safer in the end to destroy all of his connections, all of his anchors, but the ones he can keep to himself. Everyone he killed is dead to him. It’s much safer that way. 

Everyone but Sasuke. 

And Sasuke’s not safe right now. He’s not worried about whether or not his brother will kill him. That is assured. It’s what comes after that worries him. Too many powers outside of his influence are converging, it won't upset his plan, but it will affect what happens to Sasuke when he’s gone. Call him selfish, but he worries. 

Shimura Danzo is a threat. He’s been making odd moves lately, dissolving and reforming his affiliations into a pattern Itachi can’t quite see yet. Recently he’s formed a small partnership, invisible to anyone who did not know his methods, with a minor mercenary company he knows for a fact was trained by one Hashira Yuuna, and defected when she did. It’s pure conjecture at this point. He can easily -and accurately- decipher the course of the Uchiha clan, the Council, the little factions that twist and twirl in the wind, but there is something new shaping up. He won’t make it long enough to see it, but by god he will make sure Sasuke can survive it. He needs just a little bit more time.  

Hashira Fuyuki sits cross legged in a booth of the tea shop he choose for their meeting. A pretty young looking woman who looks for all the world like anyone else perusing a menu. She doesn’t glance up at him.

“That whole outfit is a little bit indelicate, don’t you think?” Her voice is soft and clear. As is her distaste. “Even without the red clouds.”   

He doesn’t care for her approval and she’s just been abundantly clear he does not have hers. “It was a long journey,” he returns just as clearly. 

Hashira looks up then down. She returns to reading her menu. 

Giri he can’t trust. Hashira is a lost cause too. What he can depend on is her sharpness, his sheer overwhelming ability, and a pressing need for the same outcome. That will have to be enough.

“I have a proposal.” He meets her eyes. She meets his. “It requires your cooperation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summary of the Itachi work: Two people with faulty information and faulty motivations go on a not very clearly defined mission full of wrong turns and more faulty information. They don't trust each other, they don't like each other. It's a beautiful thing.
> 
> Every time I read it I'm tempted to go back to it. Alas. There is a lot of it I can't reveal because it is all #spoilers. But there will be at least two other snippets when the main fic progresses.


	3. Alternate scene from chapter eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was originally right after the Naruto reunion but I moved it because I couldn't justify the positivity.

He sits down still sipping the remnants of his drink. Wasn’t this further away? Has he  _ really  _ forgotten that much about his home? 

The last grave at the end of the plot belongs to his mother. Tradition says she should have no marker and if she did it should be where her husband’s spirit could protect her. Sasuke made her one anyway, heartsick and too young to care about graverobbers or spirits. It’s carved from the most expensive stone he could find surrounded on all sides by flowers left over from his family's gardens. There’s a rattle of ice in the bottom of his drink but he’s too far from a bin to get rid of it and too polite to dump it. He puts it aside as he eases down to bow before her.    

The wildflowers have grown over his mother’s grave.

The not at all funny thing is, he just expected it to come back. A furious urge to fling himself under a cart, the dull edged murmur of an old teachers voice whispering about how quickly you can bleed out. That old worn out pattern of self loathing and fury and  _ need need need.  _ It was all going to swallow him whole when he stood here, by his mother’s grave, and told them he was finished.  

Instead his head is the endless litany of what he has to do today, where he has to go, who he has to message. Gone is his old friend hatred, gone is his focus point of fury. Whether he likes it or not the urge to slit his own neck has faded into a dull murmur in the back of his head. Still there but fading a little more with every turn of the moon, every little snap of the world he’s taken with his sharingan. Completely by accident he has learnt how to live with this.  

“Fuck.”

He’s been made completely inept by his own resilience. 

He wishes he had it in him to fight or scream or rage. God knows he can do that. Instead all he can feel is a loosening around his heart, in his throat. The pit of nothing, of loss and retribution doesn’t recede or fall away, but if it  _ was _ a noose it would be simply sitting around his neck instead of choking him. Despite himself he’s moved past the point of no return and circled back around to not necessarily wanting to live, but not being so opposed to it. There are questions to answer, food to eat, cats to occasionally look after. It’s not a lot, but he finds some grim irony in realising that it is far more than he had ten years ago. Or even six.  

With nothing else to do he trudges away to find something for lunch.

 


	4. Alternate end for latest chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This felt a little like beating a dead horse for me. It went over too many emotions I felt were better conveyed by space. The scene I decided to end on -a direct reference to the first time Sasuke felt genuinely betrayed by Giri AND the first time he was confronted with the limitations of experiences- better reflected the 'back at square one/nothing matters' mentality he has.

“Boy,” the old priestess muses, “has anyone actually explained the birds and the bees to you?”

“Excuse me?”

“What you’re describing to me sounds more like first love and less like a rivalry.”

“I-”

“Although you did grow up alone in the woods.”

“That’s not-”

“And your teachers sound deeply emotionally inept.”

“It’s not like that-”

“Not to mention Orochimaru. Never did get over that white haired fella of his.”

“Ma’am.”

“Ma’am now is it?” She shakes her broom at him. “My hearing isn’t going. I am listening. I can’t make them pay for what they did to your family nor can I box that silly family of yours for their choices. I  _ can _ give you some advice about that crush you have.”

“It is not-” He shakes his head. “Nevermind. I’ll see you later.”

“Did I tell you how I met my wife? Sit down. We’ll start there and then I’ll tell you about what to do on your wedding night.”

“I’m not a virgin.”

“Sit down son.” She takes him by the arm. “You’ve had a big shock. Let me play grandmother for awhile. I’ll say embarrassing things and cook you nice soup.”

“You don't have to. Don't go out of your way for me.”  _ You don’t need too. _

“Come inside.” She insists. “You didn’t travel all this way not to.”

Her name is Yuka. She had a wife who died in the war. She’s barely a halfway decent cook but she makes up for it with her desserts. He hates sweets but he eats them because she gives them to him. It is like having a grandmother again. He rushes to get up before her to carry the dishes to her well worn kitchen. She lives alone maintaining a shrine to the old gods. Tending to the graves of all those who came before her. He wants to ask how she does it, how she makes it work, but before he can she takes him by the hand. She turns on the radio and berates him until he takes her hand. She makes him dance with her, perform the moves he only half learned as a child, snapping her broom at his feet when he stumbles with a cackle. She is still herself and he is still sure she is at least partially a punishment from heaven. Just to prove it she makes him scrub the dishes and sweep her front yard. It’s exactly like being six again trying to get pocket money from his extended family by doing chores for them. Instead he’d just end up lying on their couches listening as they went about their day until someone came to pick him up. It was usually his mother but sometimes his father would scoop him out from underneath his uncle’s feet and carry him home on his shoulders. 

He’s facing the fire trying not to smile at the story she’s spinning when it happens. He breathes in once, sharp, and that’s it. Years, a decade and change, and he feels all of the air flood out in gasps.  

“Boy-”

The first sob is like being ripped in two. The second is the sister feeling to when he heard Itachi was dead. When he thought it was over. He buries his face in his hands and just weeps. Weeps for Tsuki and Yumi who had the wrong last name. Weeps for all the times he made himself puke from exhaustion. Weeps for the years he spent in hell making himself the perfect knife to slide between his brothers ribs. For Kakashi and Naruto and Sakura who he betrayed to do so. For Karin and Juugo and Suigetsu and every friend and acquaintance he’s ever made, he’s still grateful to have them. For himself most of all. Everytime he thinks it’s ended there’s a new thing that feels snatched from his grasp.

Yuka makes a strangled noise, rising from her seat. “Oh child.” She gathers him in her arms and lets him cry.


	5. Sakura and Tsunade have a chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Big Reveal. Sakura is messed up in so many different ways.

Sakura flops in the seat. Her Hokage, her teacher, and sometimes even her friend sits across from her. Tsunade’s face is pensive. She has yet to drink the dark liquid in her glass. Sakura downs hers in one go, months ago it would have made her gag, now she can’t even flinch. It has been a bad year, a bad three years, and today’s revelations have simply heaped more garbage on the festering wound of Sakura’s loyalty. 

“Would you have told me?” Sakura asks mildly. 

“No.”

“Why not.”

“Would you like the cowards answer? I didn’t know until a month ago. Sarutobi put it under a five star gag order, it should’ve died with him and Itachi.” Her tone of voice is derisive, scolding, like Sakura should have known better. “My reason...I knew. I met Itachi while I was travelling. He had information to pass to Jiraiya. He was heavily injured and in danger of being found out. I healed him and left the information with one of Jiraiya’s women. What the fuck did I have to care about Uchiha for? That’s what I told myself. And I was right, in some ways, it wouldn’t have helped.”

Sakura considers this numbly. It has been a bad year. It’s been a bad night. She badly wants to go home, but she’s spent a week with the jumbled up walking psychological wound that is Sasuke. She grew up with Naruto, hating him, loving him, and  _ what the fuck does it have to do with me?  _ is not an answer she accepts anymore. “Orphans of internal operations are given a pension and psychological care. You know that I know the minimum requirements for guardianship. Sasuke exceeds that by an arm and a leg. He  _ has  _ blood relatives through marriages outside of the clan. They count by our laws if not by his family. You weren’t Hokage, fair enough, but those laws are sacrosanct. They’re why we could convince so many bloodlines to settle here. Our penchant for human rights.” Sakura doesn’t bother to hide her scorn on the last. Within her living memory she has seen those laws stripped, the rise of military power within her home. It hasn’t been without resistance but a lack of war has made people suspicious and comfortable in isolation. Konoha’s walls are both physical and philosophical at this point. “You and I know there’s only one person who benefits long term from Sasuke being traumatized and isolated. Only one person in the Village hierarchy with the reach to make sure Sasuke didn’t have half a chance in hell.” Mother _fucking_ Danzo. 

Tsunade sips her drink.“You can’t kill him.”

“You need him.”

“No.”

Sakura blinks. She turns her head.

“There’s my girl.” Tsunade purrs. Gold eyes fill with purpose. “We’ve got a few more things to do before that walking pile of shit dies. Did you do it?”

Three murders, two suicides. One hand off to a large man originally from Suna now from Oto. Red hair and deep set eyes. He had a beautiful voice. He seemed almost as sorry to be there as she was. Her time at Senju Midori was well spent. She had, will and does not regret killing for her Kage, but she’s not sure how much more she can do. Despite the best tries of T&I Sakura is not cut out for some forms of intelligence work, it requires inflicting things she’d rather heal. On herself and others. Kuebiko is a breeding ground for many kinds of radical politics. At first she thought she was there to be the boot on someone’s throat but over the months, as her teacher sent word to her and only her, she realised that  _ Tsunade  _ is the one planning insurrection. 

Tsunade’s gold eyes are full of mirth and warning. Sakura never forgets what this woman taught her, what this woman had to be to be able to show Sakura all the lights and shades of being a healer. She’s both a mercy and a blight, at ease with all the corners of her power. Tsunade does not fear or hide from what she can do. Sakura can’t afford to fear or hide from what she chose the day she walked into her office and  _ demanded  _ she be taken seriously. She loves her teacher, her Hokage, sometimes even her friend and family. She would happily go to war for her. But she can’t afford to be sentimental, the woman is a legend and if she wants to break the spine of her own government she will. If she wants to throw all of them to wolves she will. All Kage's _can_ kill, but bigotry keeps the powerful of this Village from remembering that Tsunade will kill something she can't save. Nothing Sakura says -no matter how wise, no matter how deeply felt, will stop her. 

“As you say,” Sakura murmurs. She drains her drink.       

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to/probably will write another ficlet 'Someone disses Kakashi's goth child who Really Is Trying to his face. Many jounin are lost in this encounter.' I still owe something from Naruto's POV but since I can't quite figure out what his angle is in this fic it'll have to wait. As to the requested 'Let's beat up Danzo' fic, it might make it into a future chapter, if it doesn't I'll post it.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave suggestions. I reserve the right not to write them but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear them.


End file.
